Field Visit

Date 12 October 2002

Event ID 580691

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/580691

RCAHMS Archaeological Field Survey, Eigg

This small fort occupies a slight rise on a rocky promontory to the S of Kildonnan farmhouse. Roughly triangular on plan, it measures about 36m from N to S by up to 24m transversely within a low wall now largely reduced to a grass-grown stony bank up to 5m thick. The outer face can be traced intermittently around the circuit of the wall, especially on the E and S, while two earthfast stones (one on the W, one on the E) may be remnants of the inner face, suggesting an original wall thickness of about 3m. The entrance is now represented by a simple gap on the W, approached from the N by a narrow track.

Within the fort there are the confused remains of several structures and stretches of stony bank, including subrectangular depressions that may mark the sites of buildings. Where a relationship with the fort can be shown, these features are clearly all later. Also within the fort, on the E side, there are the remains of a concrete plinth, which once supported a cast statue of St Donnan produced in the late 1970s by the local artist Wesley Fyffe.

About 20m N of the fort there are traces of a possible outwork, comprising the remnants of a wall drawn across the neck of the promontory, now reduced to little more than an arc of boulders about 20m in length, with a possible entrance halfway along its length. A length of turf bank to the SW of the fort, crossing the promontory from NW to SE, is probably modern.

There is nothing in the character of the structures within the fort to support the suggestion by the Ordnance Survey that they represent the remains of St Donnan's monastery. In the absence of further evidence, it is more prudent to assume that the monastery was centred on the area occupied by the medieval church (see NM48NE 24).

(EIGG01 495)

Visited by RCAHMS (AGCH) 12 October 2002